Thursday, September 01, 2005

Here's a piece from March 7, 2002 from the Clarion-Ledger on the circumstances of Parker's firing. Here are the first several grafs ...

The assistant secretary of the Army, Mississippi's former U.S. Rep. Mike Parker, was forced out Wednesday after he criticized the Bush administration's proposed spending cuts on Army Corps of Engineers' water projects, members of Congress said.

"Apparently he was asked to resign," said U.S. Rep. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., a member of the House Appropriations Committee's energy and water development subcommittee that oversees the corps' budget.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, also said Parker was dismissed.

Parker's nomination to head the corps drew heavy criticism last year from environmental groups pushing to downsize the agency, calling its flood control projects too costly and destructive.

Parker earned the ire of administration officials when he questioned Bush's planned budget cuts for the corps, including two controversial Mississippi projects.

"I think he was fired for being too honest and not loyal enough to the president," said lobbyist Colin Bell, who represents communities with corps-funded projects.

Bell said Parker resigned about noon after being given about 30 minutes to choose between resigning or being fired.

As Josh Marshall says, this is the Bush administration in a nutshell. It has happened over and over again with disasterous results from General Shinseki to Bunnatine Greenhouse just the other day. They listen to no one who knows what they are doing.

This is banana republic shit. They funnel money to their supporters and reward their contributors and run inexplicable wars that make no sense --- at the expense of the citizens of this country. It was inevitable that this incompetent, myopic administration would fail when faced with a major disaster during this second term. They are incapable of doing anything else.

Via Media Matters, here is another perfect example of Republican thinking on this issue:

After the Storm Hurricane Katrina: The good, the bad, the let's-shoot-them-now.

By Peggy Noonan

As for the tragic piggism that is taking place on the streets of New Orleans, it is not unbelievable but it is unforgivable, and I hope the looters are shot. A hurricane cannot rob a great city of its spirit, but a vicious citizenry can. A bad time with Mother Nature can leave you digging out for a long time, but a bad turn in human behavior frays and tears all the ties that truly bind human being--trust, confidence, mutual regard, belief in the essential goodness of one's fellow citizens.

[...]

We had a bad time in the 1960s, and in the New York blackout in the '70s, and in the Los Angeles riots in the '90s. But the whole story of our last national crisis, 9/11, was courage--among the passersby, among the firemen, among those who walked down there stairs slowly to help a less able colleague, among those who fought their way past the flames in the Pentagon to get people out. And it gave us quite a sense of who we are as a people. It gave us a lot of renewed pride.

If New Orleans damages that sense, it's going to be painful to face. It's going to be damaging to the national spirit. More damaging even than a hurricane, even than the worst in decades

Yes, nothing must be allowed to blemish the steely-eyed rocket man's moment of pulsating, wet-making glory.

Here are a couple of people you won't have to waste a bullet on, you fucking privileged asshole:

A military truck with a lone soldier onboard drives by Dorothy Divic, 89, as onlookers trying to revive Divic yell in vain for him to stop, on a street outside the New Orleans Convention Center September 1, 2005. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

A man holding a baby uncovers the body of a dead man, suspected to have been sitting there for two days, outside the New Orleans Convention Center September 1, 2005.

Sigh. Give money if you can --- click on the ad at left. The liberal blogosphere is setting the goal of raising a million dollars for the relief effort.

Moveon is sponsoring www.hurricanehousing.org to help displaced people find temporary shelter. If you can help out with that, click on over and see what you can do.